Reliability of Occlusal Contacts as Methods for Occlusal Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: Methods for analysis of occlusal contacts in the intercuspal position(IP) must be certified their levels of reliability, because the use of them without the knowledge is dangerous for implant patients when their teeth might be changed of their shapes based on false data. In this study, reliability of Add-picture was evaluated from intra- and inter-examiner agreements for detection of occluding teeth in comparison with articulating film, shimstock and silicone-black.Methods: Subjects were 20 dental students that 278 antagonistic occlusal pairs without clinical mobility and malocclusions and the patient subjects were 10 implant patients. One of two examiners well trained for all methods examined with articulating film and shimstock, and made registrations of silicone-black for five subjects successively. Then the other examiner followed in the same manner. For intra-examiner agreement, whole procedures were repeated once more. Examinations with silicone-black and Add-picture were performed by the same examiners who made registrations.The data in this study was clearly classified to positive(contact) or negative(no-contact), percent agreement and Kappa statistic were used to analyze inter- and intra-examiner agreements.Result: In intra-examiner agreements of examiner A and B, silicone-black and Add-picture showed higher levels of agreements than shimstock in Percent agreement and Kappa statistic. Articulating film showed the lowest levels of agreements. In inter-examiner agreements of session 1 and 2, there were not clear differences among the methods in Percent agreement and Kappa statistic, except that articulating film showed the lowest levels of agreements. Proportions of positive agreements were greater than those of negative agreements in all methods and examinations.Conclusion: Results that shimstock showed higher levels of agreements than articulating film consisted with those of Anderson1 et al.(1993). Silicone-black and Add-picture showed almost same or little higher levels of agreements with or than shimstock. These results supported that silicone-black and Add-picture could be used as reliably as shimstock for clinical decisions.